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Writer's picturejennifercoon21

Review: The Martian


The Martian by Andy Weir was my April book club pick for my sorority's book club. This book was out of my comfort zone because I don't gravitate towards science fiction, but I am really glad that I read this novel!


Written in a diary format and a third person perspective, Mark Watney has been left on Mars after his crew left when their mission had to be abandoned due to a large sandstorm. The book switches between his accounts in Mars in isolation, where he documents his process of sustaining his life in isolation, and a third person POV of the people on Earth in NASA trying to bring him home.


Watney is incredibly intelligent. He's a botanist by trade, so he came up with a way to grow his own potatoes and increase his water supply by manipulating chemicals and using the resources he had on Mars to increase his chances of survival. This was all incredibly interesting, and I think Weir did a lot of excellent research that allowed these parts to be incredibly knowledgeable. However, I felt like the science went over my head a lot and it was hard to make sense of or perceive what was happening at times because I don't have a scientific background. The different perspectives also really helped to pick up the pace of the book, which I found helpful because I found there were times in the middle where things got really slow.


I liked how some of the scenes in the book were incredibly cinematic, especially the ones narrated in third person towards the end of the book, which really shows that this book was made to be produced as a film too. I haven't watched the movie yet, but I'm definitely more interested in it now than I was before reading this book.


Have you read or watched The Martian? Let me know your thoughts!

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